Autism and ADHD assessment and support

Terms & Conditions- July 2024

Payment

Discover Difference Psychology Clinic accepts payment by bank transfer only. Payment for the Initial Consultation must be received and cleared within 7 working days of booking the appointment. Your appointment is deemed a provisional booking until we receive the payment. If you choose to proceed to a comprehensive assessment following the Initial Consultation, the full assessment invoice is payable prior to the next booked appointment, unless specifically agreed with you on a case-by-case basis. We reserve the right to cancel any provisionally booked appointments if payment has not been received 7 days before the scheduled appointment so that we can offer the appointment to another client. Please feel reassured that you will be able to rebook any cancelled appointment once payment has been received. 

Non-attendance and late cancellations

If you have paid for the appointment and you are unable to attend, please let us know at least 48 hours in advance of the appointment. Failure to provide this notice period will result in a fee of £120 to cover the time and costs associated with a missed appointment. If our clinician is unwell and needs to cancel the appointment, we will try our best to identify an alternative clinician to facilitate the appointment and provide you with as much notice regarding any changes. If we are unable to identify an alternative clinician available to offer the appointment at the originally agreed time and date, then we will rebook an appointment to take place as soon as possible after the cancelled appointment.   

Parental consent and correspondence with parents (relevant to child assessment only)

We would like to involve all adults with parental responsibility in our child assessments. For assessment of children whose parents are separated, both parents will be invited to attend the diagnostic interviews. If a parent is unable to attend, then we will offer an opportunity for them to complete detailed questionnaires instead. If parents wish to attend two separate diagnostic interview appointments, this will be chargeable (an additional £500). We ask for separated parent contact details at the beginning of the assessment and both parents will receive a copy of our terms and conditions. The parent making the initial contact with our service will be considered the 'main referrer' and the 'main referrer' will be sent the assessment report following the assessment, and they will be asked to share the diagnostic report with the other parent with parental responsibility following the assessment. 

Online appointments

Our appointments will either be all completed online, or they will be a combination of online and in-person appointments. Please ensure that you have good internet connection for online appointments and that you are in a quiet comfortable location where you will not be disturbed. We would recommend using a laptop (ideally) or IPAD rather than a mobile phone. 

 

Emergencies and out of hours contact

We do not operate as an emergency or crisis service. If you feel that you need support urgently, please contact your GP, out-of-hours GP service (if relevant) or your local Community Mental Health Service (information on contact details will be available online). We can also recommend the Samaritans (116 123 or jo@samaritans.org). In the event of a risk of extreme harm or risk to your life, please contact emergency services (999).

Recording of sessions by clients

We do not give permission for you to record appointments. With your explicit permission, we may (very occasionally) record our ADOS-2 assessment appointments for the purpose of coding reliability. This means that we may share the video with the Discover Difference Psychology Clinic co-assessor or a supervising Clinical Psychologist, to ensure reliability when scoring the assessment. You are able to decline if you wish to, and your subsequent care will not be affected if you decline. All recordings will be stored securely in line with GDPR requirements, and the recording will be deleted once the assessment has been completed.

The outcome of our Initial Consultations

The Initial Consultation offers clients and parents an opportunity to explore the reasons for seeking a diagnostic assessment, to explore pros/cons of a diagnosis, and to collect some important background information to inform any further assessment. At the end of the Initial Consultation, our clinician will advise clients/parents as to whether a neurodevelopmental assessment for autism or ADHD) is recommended. Please note, we cannot promise that a diagnosis will be given at the end of any comprehensive assessment, even if the Initial Consultation clinician has identified possible autism or ADHD at the Initial Consultation. Very occasionally, the Initial Consultation clinician may not recommend that a full assessment is carried out at this time, due to the presence of complicating factors that will invalidate the comprehensive assessment. Examples may include significant risk issues requiring professional service input, complex legal issues (e.g. on-going court cases or criminal investigations) and complex physical or mental health conditions that require immediate intervention or treatment. In these circumstances, the clinician will advise the client/parent to return to our clinic once any recommendations have been followed. Please note, we do not offer a refund for the Initial Consultation if an assessment is not recommended at this time.

The outcome of our comprehensive assessments

We take our assessments very seriously and this is why we engage in a thorough approach to our assessment, consulting with supervisors if necessary. We understand that you may begin the assessment process expecting or hoping for a particular outcome or conclusion for yourself or your child. Whilst our Initial Consultations can provide some indication of whether autism or ADHD may be a possibility, we cannot guarantee that there will be a particular conclusion following the assessment and no refunds will be given in the event of an assessment conclusion not meeting your hopes regarding a diagnosis. Very rarely, we may complete a comprehensive assessment but are unable to provide a reliable diagnostic decision. This is usually when the presentation is particularly complex (for example, significant mental health difficulties). If we are unable to reach a clear conclusion at the time of the assessment, we are able to review the assessment following a period of mental health treatment or at a later date in the child’s development, as this can sometimes provide additional information which we can use to inform the final diagnostic decision. A diagnostic decision is made on the basis of formal assessment tools, alongside our clinical opinion and expertise. This means that you may find another clinician who may make a different diagnostic decision if they interpret information in different ways, use different tools or if they gather new information. You reserve the right to seek a second opinion from a different service if you disagree with our assessment conclusion and we are happy to recommend other services. No refunds will be given in the event of receiving a different outcome from another service.

Supervision and sharing of information

We may share (anonymised) details in supervision to support us in making a diagnostic decision. We work as a team, so all clinicians and administrative persons involved in your assessment will have access to you or your child's information only for the purpose of carrying out the assessment. We will keep information shared with us confidential, unless we are concerned about you or your child's safety or the safety of someone else. We will always try to talk to you first if we need to share information with other services. However, there may be times where we will need to make a referral or share information with other services (e.g. social care) without consent or if we have been unable to contact you to discuss the referral. We will automatically send all child assessment reports to the child's GP, and we will automatically send adult assessment reports to the GP if the assessment is for ADHD and/or if there are significant mental health or risk concerns identified during the assessment. 

Information about having an assessment and the scope of our service

We encourage you to read our 'frequently asked questions' prior to the assessment (please access this link to review the FAQs) T&Cs | Discover Difference Psychology Clinic. This document outlines the limitations of our service (for example, we do not prescribe medication for ADHD) and the implications and potential disadvantages of receiving a diagnosis (e.g. joining the military, informing the DVLA, life insurance). We would like you to read this before you attend the Initial Consultation so that you can be fully informed about the assessment. 

Privacy policy- January 2024

GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) is the most significant piece of privacy and data protection in twenty years. It came into effect on 25th May 2018 and from that date we are required to ensure that we gain a new data protection and privacy consent from all clients. In it (amongst other things) we confirm what information we hold about clients and how we are permitted to use it.

This privacy policy explains how Discover Difference Psychology Clinic uses any personal information collected about you when you visit our website and when you (or your child) become a client. Dr Sophie Hughes, Director is registered with the ICO (registration number:C1286112) and all of our associates are also registered with the ICO. Please contact hello@discoverdifference.co.uk with any questions or requests about the personal information that we process.

Protecting you (and your child's) personal information and privacy is very important to us.

Your rights are:

• To be informed about what we do with your personal data

• To rectification of any inaccurate data we process and to add to the information we hold about you if it is incomplete

• To be forgotten and your personal data destroyed

• To have a copy of all the personal information we process about you, upon request

• To restrict the processing of your personal data

• To object to the processing of data based on our legitimate interest

Why do we collect information about you?

We collect information about you because you are a past, present or future client. The nature of our work with you and the information we collect, store, process and must have a lawful basis. The lawful basis for collecting, storing, processing and sharing your personal data relates to ‘legitimate interest’ and the ‘provision of health treatment’. You can find out more about the lawful basis for personal data collection on the ICO website (www.ico.org.uk). Any personal information we hold about you is stored and processed in line with the Data Protection Act (DPA, 1998) and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR, Regulation (EU) 2016/679) adopted on 27th April 2016 and enforceable from 25th May 2018. We process the data because it is in our legitimate interests as a psychology clinic to do so. We need to view and analyse documents containing information to carry out an assessment. Another lawful reason for processing your data may be Legal Obligation. When we process “special category data” about you, this is a second lawful reason to do so as this helps us provide a health service.

What information do we collect?

We collect information about you that may include personal or sensitive information, such as:

First name or given name

Family name or surname

Address

Telephone numbers

Date of birth

Gender (or preferred identity).

Relationships & children

Occupation

Telephone/SMS number

Email address

The nature of our work with you means that we will also need to gather, store and potentially share sensitive personal data about your (or your child's) psychological and physical wellbeing, mental health, relationships, life events, diagnoses, medical and other forms of treatment and forensic/criminal history. We gather this information as is relevant for the purposes of our agreed work with you and to offer you the services you have sought from us. To make sure that you are assessed safely and appropriately, we record your personal information, such as your name, address, as well as all contacts you have with Discover Difference Psychology Clinic, such as appointments and the results of assessments and letters relating to your assessment report. Your data is kept confidential within Discover Difference Psychology Clinic. We also collect information when you voluntarily complete contact forms on our website. We may collect personal data about you from third-parties connected with your care (for example, other health and social care providers) and only with your permission, we may speak to other people such as family members who you would like to participate in the assessment to gather information essential to your assessment. We may also use search analytics providers to provide us with personal data about individual’s accessing our website. We might also record sessions with your explicit knowledge and agreement beforehand at the start of the appointment, only for the purposes of reliability, supervision and quality assurance. You have the right to decline recording of any assessment.

We also process personal data pursuant to our legitimate interests in running this business such as:

Invoices and receipts

Accounts and tax returns

If you proceed with an assessment with us, we record information you share and the details of your appointments. This includes;

Medical conditions (historical and current)

Prescribed medication.

Psychological and social history and current difficulties.

Offences (including alleged offences)

Financial information, including bank account details (when you pay for our services)

How information is stored:

All personal information provided is stored in compliance with EU General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) rules. We do not keep your data for longer than is necessary. Administrative data is retained for up to seven years, in the unlikely event there are queries from HMRC. Personal data is retained for seven years after our last contact, in compliance with professional indemnity and professional regulations. “Special category data” and personnel files held electronically are encrypted with restricted access.

Confidentiality

Your information is kept confidential with Discover Difference Psychology Clinic. Where possible, we will anonymise information so that individual clients cannot be identified. The exceptional and rare circumstances where we may need to share information is if we are concerned about significant harm happening to you (either by yourself or from someone else) as we may need to contact other services (e.g. GP, emergency services) in order to ensure your safety. In these rare cases, we will always aim to discuss this information sharing beforehand, unless there is a valid reason that we cannot. Another circumstance where we may need to share information is if we believe that there is intent to cause harm to another person/organisation (e.g. terrorism). This is because the law may require that we inform an authority without seeking your permission. In such a situation, the law may require that we share your personal information without your knowledge.

Individuals can find out if we hold any personal information by making a ‘subject access request’ or ‘Right of Access’ under the Data Protection Act and the General Data Protection Regulation. We will then supply to you:

A description of all data held about you

Inform you how it was obtained (if not supplied by you)

Inform you why, what purposes, we are holding it

What categories of personal data is concerned

Inform you who it could be disclosed to

Inform you of the retention periods of the data

Inform you around any automated decision making including profiling

How to raise a concern about how your information has been processed

If you are unhappy with any aspects of the way we collect, store, process and share the information about you, please contact the Data Protection Lead at Discover Difference Psychology Clinic by emailing hello@discoverdifference.co.uk so we can answer any questions you have and try to resolve the issue. You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) which is the United Kingston (UK) supervisory authority for data protection issues. Please see: www.ico.org.uk for further information, if required.

In the event of incapacitation or death of the psychologist working with you, another allocated professional may be asked to access and manage information related to our work with you with a view to informing you of such an event, supporting you in the transition to another psychologist or service and ensuring continued safe storage and management of records. This psychologist also adheres to the GDPR principles and will only be shared if and when there is a legitimate need for them to access the information.